Trials
by derpmano
Summary: It was a long time before he was able to think about her again. AU. Flippy x Flaky. Human names used. One-shot.


_A/N: Human names are used in this fic. I, uh, made them all up by myself, so it might get confusing._

_Flippy - Phillip Lassitor_

_Flaky - Fionna Harrison_

_Lumpy - Lars Harrison_

_Splendid - Sam Summers_

_Sniffles - Saresht Khana_

_Giggles - Gillian_

_Lifty and Shifty - Mark and Clark Procione_

_Petunia - Penelope Chou_

_Nutty - Nathan Lassitor_

_-Marina_

* * *

Phillip's hatred toward Officer Lars and his hatred toward the teenager began sometime in middle school. It was something neither of them would ever forget.

* * *

Phillip and Fionna had been friends for about six years. They were inseparable all through elementary school. They were best friends. Lars and his beautiful wife were happy.

Fionna would invite the boy over to play, fix up his hair with bows and other girly knick knacks before school started, and invite him over to make him treats. She would talk to teachers for him, they would play house with Barbies and she would help him write cursive and put glitter on art projects. Phillip would also be the good friend she was to him. He would reluctantly let her inside of his room to play, give her a boost on his shoulders when she couldn't reach something, get her cleaned up when she slipped in the mud and cried for hours, and drowned the backpacks of anyone who dared bully her on the playground.

They were little kids. They had nothing to be ashamed or unhappy about.

Fionna's parents got a divorce right after she turned six. She didn't understand what was happening. There was an ugly custody battle. Phillip's parents thought it would be best if they left the family alone for a while. He was never there to support her when she needed it.

Her father won, having better credit score, a better background and a better lawyer. Her mother moved away, never saying good bye. Phillip heard this from overhearing his parents talking late at night. He couldn't fathom why she would do that. Would his mom do the same to him?

Fionna only thought that Penelope was going on a vacation somewhere. She even sent her a postcard.

Things settled for a while. The whole situation with the Harrisons had quieted, and his parents finally deemed it safe for them to play again in the fifth grade.

By then, they had already begun to grow apart. Phillip had met Sam, who'd quickly became his best friend. They played video games and baseball and did guy things. Fionna had met Gillian and the other girls. They did each other's hair, watched chick flicks and ate ice cream when they broke up with their boyfriends. Girl things.

They never hung out again, but being neighbors and perpetual classmates, they walked to school together without much conversation. The both of them would meet up at a certain point at a certain time and walk the path in silence.

Socially, things got awkward after they entered middle school. The dreaded Family Life came around, leaving both of them dazed and confused. As if the video of a woman giving birth wasn't enough, they were shown the genetalia of the other sex's body. It was _not_ a lesson they were happy to attend.

Not long after, puberty followed. Of course they had been expecting it. The video straight out told them to expect it. What it didn't say was that it would hit when you least expected it. One day, you wake up with a boner. Or, you pull down your panties for morning relief and you see a big red stain, and run to your mother to call an ambulance, only to have her tell you that bleeding from _down there_ is normal. Yes, no matter what any number of any video tells you, you are never ready for it.

Lars deal with this in his own way. When Fionna entered the bathroom and screamed into the morning, he took care of it. She exited the room with much more blood than she had started with. She had to clean it all up.

He was already irritated that she had ruined one of his nicer undershirts. Laundry day had just passed, too. He dragged all of her clothes in the mud and flung them on her bed.

She was to clean the entire mess. He wouldn't have a useless daughter living under his roof, no matter how much in shambles they were.

Fionna never told her friend what she went through. Phillip never had to know this. She didn't want him to hurt her dad when he got the wrong idea. See, most people would think that Lars was being cruel to her, be Fionna was sure that he was only pushing her to work her hardest. So, she would never tell anyone.

Fionna was true to her own promise. She never did tell anyone about the abuse. But he found out anyway. It was months later.

During what was supposed to be a normal morning getting ready for school, Phillip was already dressed and toting his bag. He waited much, much longer than usual. If the pace Fionna was at was going to go on, they were going to be late for school. He slid the bedroom window open and climbed onto the rooftop adjoining their houses. The distance between tiled roofs was short, a few inches short of a yard. He jumped it easily. Phillip wondered what was taking so long. He peeked in her bedroom window, eyes scanning her room left and right.

She wasn't in there. He squinted. There wasn't much in her room that could possibly block his view of her, even though she was pretty small. There was a mattress. A few clothes scattered on the floor. Fionna had never liked cleaning very much. Phillip pressed his hand against the window, craning his neck to see if he could peer into the hallway. Her door was open.

"Fionna." He said. He didn't want to wake up her dad. Her dad was a grumpy bastard, from all the times he's met him. She was probably in the bathroom, washing up. The bathroom was just on the other side of her door. Maybe if he said it loud enough, she could hear him. "Fionna. Fionna." He said. "Fionna!" Phillip swore. She wasn't answering for anything. He was about to jump off the roof and check on the front door when he heard a noise.

A loud bang brought his attention back to the glass. His eyebrows knit. The hell was that? "Fionna!" he tried again.

More loud banging noises. He was getting irritated. "Come on!" he whispered angrily.

Then, she burst into the room. He smacked the window to get her attention, when he saw IT. Bright red hand marks on her back. Purple-yellow splotches all over her, lining her like pollution on a beach. She was crying, choking. On her tears. She flopped onto her mattress, sobbing.

"Fi—"

Her dad barged in. Door slammed. She screamed.

It was automatic. Second nature.

Phillip threw open the window and jumped in, racing to her, right in front of her, guarding her from the beast. The man stopped, surprise evident, gleaming in his angry eyes.

Phillip's hand was a fist now.

It punched her dad's face.

He yelled in pain.

It took his parents hours to get home from their work in the city to bail him out of overnight jail.

Then, Fionna was suddenly transferred to another school. No one had expected it. Her friends complained at the announcement, harassing the teacher for answers. Phillip donned a dark look. Fionna hadn't told anyone about her father. What should he do? Saresht burst into the room, claiming he had found the cure for acne forever. He'd distracted the rest of the class from the elephant in the room, but Phillip was still focused on it.

He never really unfocused off it.

* * *

Sam came up to him one day, looking confused. "You didn't hit a girl, did you?" he asked. Phillip was shocked. Where had he heard such a thing? When he heard that, he demanded to know who had told Splendid. He stormed off in search of the Procione brothers, the snickering idiots that spread the lie. He beat them into a bloody puddle behind the gym.

"Who told you I did that!" he shouted, his scratched up face hovering just above Clark's. The twins had put up a fight, but it hadn't been enough. Mark laid groaning on the floor, clutching his scuffed up side.

Clark's dark eyes slid everywhere. All except for the face in front of him. "I—Fionna's dad said—Well, you did beat her up, didn't you! You're beating us up, huh? Why not her!" He yelled into Phillip's face. He swung his fist back and landed it in the Italian's face. The boy's head snapped at the force of the blow, and he staggered back, falling roughly on his behind.

Phillip had taken one fierce last look at the boy's bruised face and turned heel.

Fionna's dad?

Of course, the bastard. Bastard. An insatiable hatred for the man bloomed in his chest, like the blast of heat when you open an oven. It stung. The bastard had moved her somewhere where Phillip couldn't help her, the coward. Probably moved to the city where he could never find him. There were plenty of cheap places to squat in.

He gritted his teeth. He hated the idea of Fionna staying with that dirtbag.

But what could he do about it? What?

Nothing.

After the day of the fight, he started to become irritable. Uncontrollable. He always needed to be in motion somehow. It kept his emotions in check. Hate hate hate. In class, he couldn't sit still. Every day, under his desk, his leg was always bouncing up and down. Really fast. Aggravated by something. The few friends he had watched in worry. But he distanced himself from them too.

Fionna was always on the brain. That rumor. He hit her. No, he didn't. Her dad was spreading lies, possibly even right now. Talking. Ruining his reputation. Now people were even scared of him as he walked through the halls. They parted when he came near, clinging to the walls as if he had the plague. He got sent up to the principal's office more. He beat people up more.

Lots of people were intimidated by him. Most of all, the guys who would corner him after school and force him to fight.

Gangs of them would chase him into the brick alley on the far end of campus. No teachers would see them there. They brought their little shanks, fashioned out of plastic rulers and pens with no ink. Delinquents find a way to be violent. They always do.

The leader brandished his weapon. A real knife. It gleamed in the dim light.

Phillip backed into the brick wall. A dead end. He wouldn't provoke. He wouldn't start a fight.

That way, if he killed someone, he could call it self defense.

No one died. There are four boys in intensive care. One is on life support.

The parents of the hospitalized crooks teamed up and launched an ugly lawsuit onto his parents. His mother and father were constantly under stress. They didn't seem to be winning. High class people can afford high class lawyers. His parents, however, had to rely on their church to fund Phillip's intuition at the private school. They are dependent on their cousin who is an attorney. He is under stress as well.

He was in house arrest. Sitting around. Hate building. Frustration mounting. Breaking glass. Throwing things. Break break break. He broke lots of things in the house that week. He found himself hating everything he threw. Mostly because he imagined the bastard's face on every single one of them.

The other side won, but they had to agree terms of victory with Phillip's parents. His parents didn't have money. They were flat broke from all that fighting. The cousin backed out on them to save his own skin. Coward.

A pamphlet was shoved in his face the moment his father woke him up with a flashlight to the eyes. They had come to an agreement at four in the morning with the help of four lawyers against them and lots of coffee.

Phillip was going to military school.

The training was brutal. The drill masters all had connections the delinquent parents. They kept on him like a pack of rabid dogs. They snapped and barked. They were hired to break every bone in his body. While the other teens awoken to the shrill sound of trumpet every morning, Phillip had a bucket of ice water in the face. The other boys were divided into teams. Phillip had the luxury of being tortured singularly. Obstacle courses, ten mile runs, crawling through mud, wading through water, hopping tires, climbing wall, eating sand when the sergeants wrestled him to the dirty ground. It was brutal. He had bruises, scratches, scrapes, slashes, cuts, teeth marks from a questionable event regarding a Rottweiler on the loose.

But he endured. He climbed every wall, swam every lake, ran every mile. He built muscle. The other teens looked up to him like a super star. The drill sergeants even respected him for never complaining.

By the time he was finished, when summer ended, he had scores of new friends and new connections. Most of all, he had learned to forget Fionna and control his anger.

The parents from the battle so long ago could go suck it.

Departing from that shuttle to come back home was the most memorable thing he'd ever done. That first step, combat boot onto cracked asphalt, his first foot back on suburban street pavement was one of his strongest memories, along with everything that came before it.

He stepped off the Greyhound a new man.

His parents stood on their doorstep, his aunt and newly born cousin behind them. They wore identical looks of doubt, swapping glances at each other. They couldn't imagine a son different than the one who left.

It was the moment where he decided to love them. He adjusted his back pack strap, lifted up his cap and flashed a toothy grin. It shone. He was missing a tooth—it was knocked out from the whole Rottweiler debacle.

His mother burst into tears. She couldn't handle the emotions she felt when her son smiled at her for the first time since elementary school. He smiled. His father couldn't believe it either. He embraced his wife, so relieved.

Phillip walked up to them with a new confidence in his step. His parent opened up their arms. He walked right into them, feeling the warmth as they closed the embrace around him.

"Thank you." He said.

His aunt stared upon them in wonder. She held her little baby, Nathan, close to her, much like the hug that the three shared before her.

Phillip didn't see Fionna again for a long, long time. But that was fine with him. It gave the rawness of his wound enough time to heal, to fade into a hidden scar he would never share with anyone. Thinking of her father raising his hand to her like that made his anger bubble up through the cracks, but now, he was strong enough to be able to push it down.

His parents, infinitely grateful to the young man he'd become, never sent him away again.

So he would be there the next time Fionna visited her home town.

Hopefully, the encounter the two were bound to have would be a happy one.

* * *

_A/N: For those of you who don't know, a Greyhound is a bus that runs all the way across the United States. At least, depending on which line you take. I rode a Greyhound once. It was terrifying! There were so many thugs, you had no idea. And when I got my suitcase back from the luggage hold, two of my bras were missing._

_Those Greyhounds, I tell ya. Next time, I'll take a nice plane to Cheecago._

_But about those names, hm'kay._

_Phillip sounds like Flippy. So there's that. His last name Lassitor is the same last name of the honorable yet feisty Connor Lassitor from Unwind! It's amazing how Connor almost exactly mirrors how I always pictured Flippy would be without his wacky side of him._

_Fionna because Fionna is both a bad ass ogre voiced by my beautiful babe Cameron Diaz and because she is also a kick ass, crime fighting babe from Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake. Harrison is French for hedgehog._

_Penelope and Lars. Lars is a name of a certain character WINK WONK, and Penelope sounds like a real anal girl's name. And who is more anal than the Chinese? Skunk in Chinese is 'chou you', according to Google Translate (HANS I TRUSTED YOU)._

_Saresht means 'superior' in Punjabi. Khana is the shorter translation for ant eater, again according to Google Translate, but still don't trust that crafty bastard. why is Sniffles Indian? Because not everybody is white. And Indians can be hot._

_Giggles and Gillian are G's. Represent._

_Mark and Clark because they rhyme like Lifty and Shifty. Procione means raccoon in Italian._

_Nutty and Nathan are N's._

_Explaining gets me hot. I need a towel._

_-Marina_


End file.
